Fossils of 80-million-year-old dinosaur moved to Egyptian research lab

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Scientists at Egypt's Mansoura University are delicately restoring the fossils of a roughly 80-million-year-old dinosaur which was discovered in Egypt's Sahara Desert oasis last week.

The discovery, made by a group of paleontologists from Mansoura University, sheds light on a mysterious time period in the history of dinosaurs in Africa.

The scientists recovered parts of the skull, lower jaw, neck, and back vertebrae, ribs, shoulder and forelimb, back foot and osteoderms of the long-necked, four-legged, school bus-sized dinosaur. Paleontologist Hesham Sallam who led the study said the team are working on recovering the remaining parts of the dinosaur.

Researchers said the plant-eating Cretaceous Period dinosaur, named Mansourasaurus shahinae, was nearly 33 feet (10 metres) long and weighed 5.5 tons (5,000 kg) and was a member of a group called titanosaurs that included Earth's largest-ever land animals. Like many titanosaurs, Mansourasaurus boasted bony plates called osteoderms embedded in its skin.

Mansourasaurus, which lived near the shore of the ancient ocean that preceded the Mediterranean Sea, is one of the very few dinosaurs known from the last 15 million years of the Mesozoic Era, or age of dinosaurs, on mainland Africa. Madagascar had a separate geologic history.

Its remains, found at the Dakhla Oasis in central Egypt, are the most complete of any mainland African land vertebrate during an even larger time span, the roughly 30 million years before the dinosaur mass extinction 66 million years ago, according to Sallam.